Skilled doctors, patient nurses, attentive staff, and the latest medical equipment — these sound like the equation for stellar healthcare facilities. However, no facility is complete without a steady supply of healthcare gases.

Our team at nexAir has prepared an overview of the primary healthcare gases and their applications. This refresher helps you better serve your patients.

A Closer Look into the 3 Healthcare Gases

Hospitals, healthcare facilities, dental clinics, pharmaceutical research laboratories, and other medical settings use various gases in everyday operations. The three most commonly used are oxygen, nitrogen, and nitrous oxide. Let’s learn more about them.

Oxygen

Oxygen is the most commonly used gas in any healthcare facility. It’s required in all medical settings. It can relieve patients dealing with trauma incidents, surgeries, respiratory illnesses, and other vulnerable conditions. It provides supplemental oxygenation for patients that are dealing with hypoxia and hypoxemia. 

Apart from patient resuscitation efforts and inhalation therapy, oxygen can also be used in bioreactors, incubators, and other equipment used in medical research.

Note that oxygen differs from medical air, administered in the ICU, NICU, and other patient care areas using a specific air compressor. On a related note, carbon dioxide is another common healthcare gas — but mainly for less invasive surgical procedures, such as abdominal laparoscopy and endoscopy.

Nitrogen

Unlike oxygen, which is mainly used for supplemental respiration and resuscitation efforts, medical-grade nitrogen is often used in cryosurgery and dermatological procedures. This is because it’s capable of targeting and eliminating infected tissue.

Nitrogen can also be used to freeze and preserve blood, bone marrow, cell tissues, sperm, and other biological samples that need to be studied or transported.

Meanwhile, liquid nitrogen is primarily used in healthcare settings to power surgical tools, medical research equipment, and other medical instruments.

Nitrous Oxide

Many people know nitrous oxide as the “laughing gas.” This is primarily because the healthcare gas doubles as an analgesic and an anesthetic, especially for dental surgical procedures. It could function as both pain medication and anesthesia.

However, note that nitrous oxide isn’t the same as helium gas. The latter is often used when patients need greater oxygen intake due to asthma, respiratory issues, and other health conditions obstructing the upper airway. On a related note, liquid helium can also be used to cool down MRI and NMR magnets.

Get Trusted Healthcare Gas Supplies at nexAir

The team at nexAir Healthcare understands that lives depend on what you do and how you do things. So to help you focus on saving and improving the lives of your patients, we take away the burden and distraction of monitoring your gas supply.

Whether you need portable oxygen systems or bulk gas supply, you can count on our team to handle the installation, maintenance, and monitoring so you can focus on giving patients the care that they deserve. Let our gas products and solutions contribute to your career of saving lives and allow you to Forge Forward without worries. Contact us.